Contents
Operating Xastir
Again, NEVER RUN XASTIR AS THE ROOT USER! You're risking the security of your system by attempting it. Create another regular user on your system and use that user for all of your normal activity. This goes for any other normal activity on the system as well. Only use the "root" account for maintenance activities, not for regular user activities (see: sudo). You'll thank me later!
Assuming you want to start Xastir up in the English language, you can type (from an xterm window):
xastir
which will start up the program without giving you back a command-prompt in your xterm window (until Xastir exits), or you can type (from an xterm window):
xastir &
which will start Xastir in the background, giving you back your xterm for more commands. The typical way to start it is with "xastir &". Of course you can get fancier and attach it to your window manager's menus or create an icon on your desktop which starts it. Those are operating system/window manager-specific, so we won't cover how to do that here.
Changing the Language
If you want to start Xastir using some other language, you do that with command-line switches when you start Xastir. Once you use one of these switches, that language option becomes "sticky", meaning you won't have to enter that command-line switch again unless you wish to change languages.
There are some command-line switches that you can If you type "xastir -?", which is an invalid command-line option, you'll see this:
xastir: invalid option -- h
Xastir Command line Options
-c /path/dir Xastir config dir -i Install private Colormap -geometry WxH+X+Y Set Window Geometry -lDutch Set the language to Dutch -lEnglish Set the language to English -lFrench Set the language to French -lGerman Set the language to German -lGreek Set the language to Greek -lItalian Set the language to Italian -lPortuguese Set the language to Portuguese -lSpanish Set the language to Spanish -m Deselect Maps -t Internal SIGSEGV handler enabled -v level Set the debug level
Ignore those for now unless you need to change the Language.
OK, Xastir should show up on your screen at this point. We're assuming that you're already running X-Windows graphical environment at this point. If you're in command-line Linux/Unix only, Xastir won't run.
If you've configured in ShapeLib capability, you'll need to run xastir/scripts/get-NWSdata as the root user in order to get the NOAA data files you'll need for the weather alerts. Run this script periodically (once every six months perhaps?) to keep your weather alert maps up-to-date. If you're not in the U.S. or one of it's possessions then you can safely ignore this download.
Various ways to manipulate Xastir
Context-Dependent Operations
Normal Draw-CAD Measure Move
------ -------- ------- ----
Cursor Arrow Pencil Crosshairs Crosshairs
LeftClick SelectObject
LeftDrag ZoomToArea ZoomToArea MeasureArea MoveObject
MiddleClick ZoomOut SetCADPoint ZoomOut ZoomOut
Alt+f, Alt+v, etc to bring up main menus via the keyboard. Use arrow keys to navigate menus and/or single letters corresponding to the "hot" letter (underlined lettter) for each menu item.
"ESC" to back out of the menu system.
Global Operations
LeftClick Select Menu or GUI Item (when in menus or dialogs) LeftDblClick FetchAlertText (when in View->Wx Alerts dialog) RightClick OptionsMenu PageUp ZoomOut PageDown ZoomIn ArrowUp PanUp ArrowDown PanDown ArrowLeft PanLeft ArrowRight PanRight "=" GridSize++ "+" GridSize++ "Num+" GridSize++ "-" GridSize-- "Num-" GridSize-- "Space" Activate current widget "Tab" Rotate among widgets "Back-Tab" Rotate among widgets backwards
Other Possible External Stimuli
Send a SIGUSR1 to cause a snapshot to be taken. See HowTo:Snapshots
Send a SIGHUP to cause Xastir to save/quit/restart.
Send a SIGINT, SIGQUIT, or SIGTERM to cause Xastir to quit.
Connect to TCP port 2023 if Server Port is enabled to send/receive packets.
Send to UDP port 2023 via the xastir_udp_client program to inject packets.
Note that you can also tweak a define/recompile to reverse the left/right button functions.